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Amnesty apologises to Iggy Pop for advert

Amnesty International have apologised to Iggy Pop over use of his image in a Belgian Amnesty International advertisement.

The picture showed Pop with his face cut and bruised, his eye swollen, and a French-language caption in which Iggy welcomed Justin Bieber as "the future of rock'n'roll." The caption also said: "Torture a man and he will tell you anything."

Apparently, the Belgian Amnesty International organisation had failed to ask Iggy for permission and has apologised for using him in its latest campaign.

"To generate awareness about our campaign against torture, Amnesty International Belgium French speaking section used an image of Iggy Pop without his authorisation," Amnesty said in a statement.

“Even though we acted in good faith, we would like to apologise to Iggy Pop for having done so. The overall goal of this campaign is to try to influence people's ideas on the use of torture.

“According to surveys, a shocking number of people believe that 'torture may sometimes be useful'; more than 36 percent of people even think that torture is justified in some cases.

“This is unacceptable, and we illustrate this reality with the message that a man who is tortured will say anything in order to escape this awfulness, using provocative images and statements to attract public attention.

"We would therefore also like to make it clear that the statement attributed to Iggy Pop that he believes Justin Bieber is the future of rock and roll does not represent Iggy Pop's personal opinion but was part of the creative process for this campaign and was intended to be ironic."